Saturday, June 18, 2011

Climate Change..and Ultrarunning

I am a member of the Sierra Club (of course).While not everything the club does is perfect, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks and they are an environmental and ecological and political force t o be reckoned with.

Anyway, the July/August issue of their magazine just arrived and in the quiet of the morning sitting beside my water garden I pored over it.The magazine is FULL of material of interest to Ultrarunners, and in subsequent posts I will explore those.

Biu today I’ll just focus on an essay by Carl Pope, Sierra Club chairman, that he calls Bevies of Black Swans.A Black Swan is an unanticipated event with enormous consequences:

Humanity’s latest gamble is ignoring climate change.Thos endorsing it argue that the likely costs of preventing climate disruption exceed the probable benefits, particularly to the present generation.Not only is this conclusion almost certainly false; it also largely irrelevant.The issue…is not the likely benefits of action but the potential costs of inaction in the form of black swan climate changes…We can clearly afford a rapid transition away from fossil fuels; it won’t be free, but we can pay the bill.What we can’t afford is the collapse of our stable climate.